The Shifting Structure of Chicago’s Organized Crime Network and the Women It Left Behind

• In Event: Masculinities and Gendered Identities

Abstract

Organized crime groups are predominantly male enclaves, but located at their margins are clusters of men and women who contribute to the day-to-day grind of the informal and illicit enterprises. This study examines the edges of organized crime networks to reveal configurations of relationships between women and their male counterparts that contributed to organized crime's size, structure, and durability. Sampling from a unique relational database on early 1900s Chicago organized crime, I compare an organized crime network at two points in time-before and during Prohibition. I find that while some men adapted to the rapidly shifting structures of organized crime and moved into Prohibition era criminal opportunities, almost all of the women in the early organized crime network were left behind. I situate this finding in the larger theory of the gendering of criminal relationships, to which social network analysis contributes new empirical calculations and theoretical developments.

Author

• Chris Smith, University of Massachusetts, Amherst